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[rabidgam3r]

Ok... I am just sort of wondering what the point of dual wielding is in a game all about "finishing blows"

More finishing blows per second.

FBPS?

Or, for the more simple-minded, Murders Per Second.
....
....
Someone should totally make MPS a thing. We need to rate every weapon in Hotline Miami/Hotline Miami 2 on it's MPS.

[nenjin]

Ok... I am just sort of wondering what the point of dual wielding is in a game all about "finishing blows"

T-intersections with guys using firearms on either side is a dangerous approach. Maybe you get lucky on your angle and clear one, allowing you to focus on the last and corner camp him. Or maybe one or both guys sidestep to their corner and blow your brains out. Being able to break cover and fire on either side of you allows you to storm rooms and deal with tricky layouts like that. Waiting for guys to move on their patrols to more favorable spots can kill your round score.

Also, DWing guns is badass.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I very rarely used guns in the first game. If you want to get A+ you need to quickly chain together those combos and finishers. The levels in Miami 2 look a bit more open so there might be more merit in using guns but even then it's probably better to try and strafe the bullet and clobbering the target for the boldness.

The few times I used guns were places where enemies just couldn't be charged with melee weapons. They were generally closely bunched in tight rooms where I imagine a shotgun or assault rifle would perform much better than dual weapons. Perhaps if I could throw one of the weapons while still shooting it might get some utility, knocking down a lone enemy to the right while turning to mow down a bunch of goons to the left then returning to finish the right guy could possibly maximise points in some areas.

[Vattic]

Looking forward to this.

[WealthyRadish]

I very rarely used guns in the first game. If you want to get A+ you need to quickly chain together those combos and finishers. The levels in Miami 2 look a bit more open so there might be more merit in using guns but even then it's probably better to try and strafe the bullet and clobbering the target for the boldness.

Heh, I remember the best way of getting crazy scores was to use the drill for ridiculous amounts of points. Pretty cheesy though. When I revisited Hotline Miami a bit ago, I actually found the guns really fun to play with for speedrunning. I remember it being one of the things that attracted me to the game actually, given the way ammo and guns were handled that really necessitated the kind of crazy fast paced swapping and movement (or camping I guess, but that's no fun).

Also, do any of you guys remember that story of one of the devs giving tech support to pirates on a torrent page? I actually remember being on that page before the story came out and seeing the dev in there, and finding it to be one of the coolest things in my gaming experiences. I bought it a couple years later (shoutout to jobs) but it's stuck with me as something about that game and studio (some people say he did it for publicity, but I doubt it). So yeah, psyched to see this sequel.

[nenjin]

*ring ring*

"There's a game somewhere. A very naughty game. I want you to go to Steam, find that game, and then click the Pre-order button. When you've done that, I want you to wait."

*click*

I'd totally forgotten about this until I saw it pop up on Steam. There's been little to no fanfare about the game that I've been seeing since that hoopla about one of their in-game scenes people got offended by, so it came as kind of a surprise to see it pop up on Steam's top sellers.

$13.49 until March 10th, which is also its release date.

And there's the Digital Special Edition for $18, which apparently includes some of the soundtrack. I bought the last HLM soundtrack outright last time, but it seems weird to me to do it this way (why a special edition and why only some of the music? Why not just the DLC?) and I find myself strangely reluctant to pay for it. I mean, I loved the music from the first game, but will I love this? I won't know til I play the game. Weird asking people to make that choice in which version they buy.

Aaaannndd I guess it has tie-ins to Payday 2. Anyone owning Payday 2 who buys either edition unlocks special guns, clothes, masks and weapons themed around HLM.

So what's new about it? The story and in general the game seems like it's going to be much longer. The view point is going to jump between like 8 different people or more over the course of the game. Most (each?) of the characters will have a unique special ability (rolling through gunfire, dual wielding) and some will play very differently than others. From a wikipedia article on it:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Writer: A journalist named Evan investigating the story behind Jacket's murders alongside The Detective. Contrary to the other characters, The Writer doesn't seem to outright kill people; many of his attacks are nonlethal unless the player performs a 'finisher' on a downed enemy. Repeated violence causes his vision to turn red and his attacks to become deadly. Normally, however, The Writer will unload any firearm he picks up and will aim to disable his opponents, usually by beating them with blunt objects.

It will also have difficulty modes, including extra tough unlockable ones and a level creator.

I'm pretty psyched. I loved HLM once I'd gotten into it, but it was quick play that I didn't find had a ton of replay value. (For me it was a case of the story being supported by the game play, rather than the other way around, so once you'd done it the gameplay wasn't really something I felt like coming back to.) So on the one hand, I'm stoked for a lot more story punctuated by the gameplay. On the other, I'm wondering if they can capture lightning in a bottle like they did with the first game. HLM and what it does is no longer new. Can it still shock the senses like it did the first time? The shock value for me quickly wore off (murder at the end of the day is still murder) and I was delighted to find there was something nuanced going on beyond that. Then again, the secret ending (which is now the canonical ending) and the scope of what was happening was probably my least favorite part of the game. The story in HLM2 is both prequel and aftermath and is going to jump around a lot, so it will kinda be both parts I liked and didn't like.

[scrdest]

It is me, or does The Soldier look suspiciously like a certain Pizza Guy/Bartender/Video Rental Clerk?

[nenjin]

It is me, or does The Soldier look suspiciously like a certain Pizza Guy/Bartender/Video Rental Clerk?

Nah man, you're just being paranoid...

[ggamer]

My favourite thing about Hotline Miami was the interplay between the fast-paced gunplay where you're constantly unloading weapons and throwing shit and picking up knives, and the end of the mission where you walk through all the fucked up shit you just did while calm synth music plays. It's like a visual representation of an lsd trip, with the end being the PC coming down from the high.

If anything, I hope that Hotline Miami 2 recreates that feeling, and I hope it gets rid of those godawful stealth segments.

[NobodyPro]

Well this got banned down-under. So much for the R-rating.

[Jiokuy]

"Fake difficulty the game part 2".

Yeah, because without being particularly good at quick reflex-based games after a few playthroughs of the original I can finish pretty much any level without dying once, and without repeated attempts being the exact same. By this point I stopped playing the game because it is actually far too easy. Precisely one of the greatest features of Hotline Miami is how its difficulty is anything but fake. You just gotta get the hang of the game.

 A tip from game design. I believe you're using "Fake Difficulty" incorrectly. Hotline Miami's core game-play falls under the umbrella of Practice style gameplay. Much like Dark Souls, once you learn the areas it becomes easier.

"Fake Difficulty" would be something like giving 1 in 10 enemies a homing missile that instantly and always kills you, then having it so sometimes they randomly spawn too far away and you can't mad dash to kill them in time. "Fake Difficulty" undermines the core experience of the game.

That said, It would be awesome if Hotline Miami 2 included more Improvised play over a strict regimen of Practice based play.

[scrdest]

"Fake difficulty the game part 2".

Yeah, because without being particularly good at quick reflex-based games after a few playthroughs of the original I can finish pretty much any level without dying once, and without repeated attempts being the exact same. By this point I stopped playing the game because it is actually far too easy. Precisely one of the greatest features of Hotline Miami is how its difficulty is anything but fake. You just gotta get the hang of the game.

 A tip from game design. I believe you're using "Fake Difficulty" incorrectly. Hotline Miami's core game-play falls under the umbrella of Practice style gameplay. Much like Dark Souls, once you learn the areas it becomes easier.

"Fake Difficulty" would be something like giving 1 in 10 enemies a homing missile that instantly and always kills you, then having it so sometimes they randomly spawn too far away and you can't mad dash to kill them in time. "Fake Difficulty" undermines the core experience of the game.

That said, It would be awesome if Hotline Miami 2 included more Improvised play over a strict regimen of Practice based play.

Aside from AI reacting slightly differently, there are several levels where some enemies generate with a random weapon, so you simply cannot practice it until you can play it with your eyes closed, because that goon that had a knife last time has a shotgun this time, although it only applies to some of the enemy spawns, so there is some variance.

But yeah, if you're not using any special masks, the non-special enemies follow the exact same rules as you - the only advantage they have is numbers. HM is incredibly fair in that respect.

[Mipe]

Hm. The more advanced graphics become, the more pixellated games become... what's this? 

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Hm. The more advanced graphics become, the more pixellated games become... what's this? 

Australian censorship.

[scrdest]

Hm. The more advanced graphics become, the more pixellated games become... what's this? 

The graphics - and our expectations - have risen so far that anything beneath a certain minimum just looks awful - think those various Greenlight Unity crappy games - and a certain level of advancement is just plain unattainable without a budget to rival, say, annual government spending of Luxembourg.

So the solution it to go even lower. It's kinda like the Uncanny Valley, except for graphics - you're better off going for 'not advanced at all' if you cannot reach 'advanced' than just landing somewhere midway through, since you can make a purtty pixel-art game much better than you can make a tolerable game with, say, Deus Ex 1-tier graphics, because that's what you can afford to make.

And arguably, the games that don't try to go for the hottest new graphics but instead work with a graphics style based in simpler technologies and drawn instead of rendered art age much better than the graphics card burning stuff with eleventy billion polygons per raindrop anyhow, plus there's the nostalgia factor for old arcade games.